


Thomas Barrow: Sugar Daddy

by Orchidae



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Sad and Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:48:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29249787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orchidae/pseuds/Orchidae
Summary: Thomas is trying to heal from the death of his partner when a handsome bartender enters the picture.
Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Edward Courtenay, Thomas Barrow/Jimmy Kent
Comments: 4
Kudos: 50
Collections: Well I love you: Valentines for Thomas Barrow





	Thomas Barrow: Sugar Daddy

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really know where I was going with this. Probably a bittersweet tragicomedy I guess. This story has a lot of stuff about grief and includes a relationship with quite a big age difference in a fairly non-glamourized context. But if you don't feel like reading about that sort of thing feel free to give this one a miss. I might add more to this later, but for now it's a one-shot.

Thomas Barrow was dating a university student. A graduate student, but a student, nonetheless. This was a new low, even for him. He was a serious medical professional for heaven’s sake. He’d paid off his student loans. He had a mortgage on a house in Swinton and drove a Honda Civic. He had, for all outside purposes, succeeded at adulting. He had no business dating a twenty-two-year-old.

It had all started at Sybil’s 30th birthday party at one of those restaurants that had a six-month waiting list. The maître d’, a man with impossibly bushy eyebrows, had looked at him like he was the scum of the earth because he was wearing trainers. He had come straight from the hospital and while he had remembered to bring a suit and tie to change into, he had completely forgotten his dress shoes. Thomas had taken one look at the twelve-course tasting menu and knew that he would be leaving the restaurant hungrier than when he came in. Fried pig’s blood with apples cooked for six months? A warm tea of bio-dynamic vegetables? It sounded disgusting.

It was easy to forget, when Sybil and Tom lived so modestly, that Sybil came from money. Serious money. As in her father was some sort of lord who owned half of Yorkshire. Compared to her sisters, Sybil’s career as a junior doctor was surprisingly normal. Mary could be best described as a professional socialite and Edith was the director of a magazine that was so aspirational it had once published a feature on cosmetic procedures for horses.

To top it all off, Phillip had been invited for some reason and he had brought his new boyfriend, a personal trainer from Greece named Apollo who looked like he had just descended from Mount Olympus. Thomas didn’t care exactly. Phillip was ancient history and Apollo was very welcome to him. Only he made Thomas acutely aware of his belly, that was in danger of turning into a gut, and his pallid skin and dark circles that came from long working hours and too many cups of tea and cigarettes.

Seeing Sybil again was lovely, but their reunion brought back too many memories of Edward. Mostly nice memories, she had been instrumental in getting them together, but somehow the memories of happier times seemed even more painful. He was picking at a thimbleful of ice cream made from plum kernels when she had mentioned all the evenings they had spent at Archie’s because Edward had liked how he could just about see the pink neon lights and Thomas thought he might burst into tears right at the dinner table. He excused himself and left the private function room her father had hired and walked through the main restaurant to the men’s room and bawling his eyes out in an empty cubicle.

After he had composed himself and washed his face, he decided or order a drink before he summed up the nerve to return to the party. The beer cost ten pounds but the bartender was so attractive that he didn’t complain.

“Rough night?” The barman said.

“You could say that,” Thomas replied.

“You’re with the private party, right? Tasting menu?”

“Yeah,”

“What did you think of it?”

“Some of it was nice,” Thomas said, trying to be polite. “Like that plum kernel ice cream. You could really taste the… kernels.”

“Well, I hope Alfred’s experiments do put you off this place,” the man said. “It was his first time putting a menu together since they made him head chef and I think he went a bit mad with power.”

“Oh.”

“Thing is, Beryl our last head chef and Daisy the sous chef left to start up their own place. They’re doing a soft opening next week if you’re interested.”

“Er…yeah. Yeah, sounds good.” _Are you flirting with me?_ Thomas thought. No, he was probably just promoting this new place for his friends. But then the other man slid his receipt across the bar, and he had written his name and phone number on it. Jimmy. That was definitely flirting, and when he was asking if he was interested, he meant if he was interested in going with him. Thomas tucked the receipt into his breast pocket, as though it was something precious and went back to the party.

He hadn’t been sure if he should text Jimmy. He must have been old enough to serve alcohol, but he seemed awfully young. Thomas wasn’t even sure if he was ready to start dating again? Everyone said three years was long enough to grieve but it didn’t feel that way. His house was still filled with Ed’s things, not just treasured mementos but his old clothes and toiletries, his home office lay untouched with piles of braille books and external hard drives full of audio files collecting dust. The house felt too big now. They had bought the place because Ed had wanted them to start fostering. He had worked as a child counsellor and thought they might be able to create a stable home perhaps for children who were also blind or who had other needs. He didn't like to remember Ed in his last moments, when they'd put him in palliative care and kept him in a haze of morphine. Thomas still blamed himself for not catching the symptoms sooner. He was a doctor for heavens sake. He had always been so dynamic, so hardworking, never allowing his disability to slow him down. Ed had once played for the National Blind Cricket Team, it had been the thing that had got them talking in fact since Thomas had entertained dreams of playing professionally but hadn't quite made it. Thomas had made an off colour joke about being used to having balls flying at his face, and Ed had groaned but had also been charmed by his puerile sense of humour. 

Thomas had retired Ed’s guide dog after he had passed away, and now Bourneville was more of an emotional support dog now with all the times Thomas had spent on the living room floor crying into his chocolate fur. Perhaps it was time to get back out there. Sharing a bed with Bourneville and his dog breath was no substitute for a boyfriend. So Thomas threw caution to the wind and sent him a message.

*

What could he say about Jimmy Kent? He wasn’t Thomas’s usual type. Not that he really had a type. Aside from Phillip and Ed, he had only slept with two other people, a Turkish international student who had blanked him the next day and his friend Chris when they were in college ‘just so they wouldn’t wonder’. Jimmy was currently doing a masters degree in composition and performance at the Royal Northern College of Music and made most of his money moonlighting at the restaurant, and considerably less money as a pianist. He didn’t mind Thomas’s long working hours at the A&E at Salford Royal, in fact he was happy to keep things casual which was something of a relief. Thomas didn’t want to dump all his emotional baggage on the lad. He was ten years younger than Thomas, which felt pervy and not in a good way. Jimmy never asked for anything, and he preferred they go to places where he could pay his own way, but Thomas imagined what people thought when they saw them together. Thomas Barrow: Sugar Daddy. What a joke. 

Ten years didn’t seem like much on paper, but with their life experiences it might as well have been fifty. Thomas had already moved in with Ed when he was Jimmy’s age. He had first realised he was gay in the early 2000s which had been awful, only fully came out a decade later, and his father still wasn’t entirely comfortable talking about his sexuality. Jimmy on the other hand had been openly bisexual since he was fourteen with the full support of his parents and aside from the occasional isolated incident at school, had barely had anything bad happen to him as a result. Thomas knew he shouldn’t feel weird about the bi thing and did his best to overcome his own prejudices. Jimmy was always ranting about bi-phobia and bi-erasure (which Thomas always pictured as a bisexual Erasure tribute band).

Speaking of music, Jimmy loved classical music and jazz, and top 40 hits, and there was no in between. He knew of the Beatles and the Rolling stones but had never listened to them. He had never heard of Placebo and only knew Creep by Radiohead ‘from the meme’. Thomas had never felt so old.

He wasn’t sure what Jimmy saw in him, he was so full of energy and life, and he went running every morning, and he was so cute it made Thomas’s heart hurt. He knew he meant it as a compliment, but Jimmy had once called him a soft boy and Thomas had sulked about it for a week. He’d said he had a dad bod for heaven’s sake. Perhaps Jimmy was subconsciously looking for a father figure, (his dad had passed away when he was quite young). Perhaps Thomas was trying to save a younger version of himself. They were very different on the surface, but increasingly Thomas noticed some similarities in how they behaved and reacted to things. He wasn’t sure if being together was a positive thing or the worst idea he’d ever had. It was the right thing for now, and that was probably the best he could manage.


End file.
